Transferring Shares to my Spouse

iwaddo77

I did not actually do anything with the shares. The HMRC did not want anything and did not provide anything. I sent a note to our uk financial advisor just so there was a record on file and our finances now show we own 50% each in their reporting.

Please let me know if I can help further

poseidon1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81881534#Comment_81881534

To do this properly in the UK in a format recognised by HMRC would require a Declaration of Trust document to be executed in favour of the spouse, declaring that from a certain date, a share of income and gains from the asset concerned accrues in favour of the receiving spouse.

Essentially you are declaring that although you remain sole legal owner on title, beneficial ownership is henceforth shared between you from the operative date.

However, how that document works in the context of American held securities where IRS W-8Ben declarations come into the picture to retrict US tax to the lower 15% rate for both beneficial owners, was not explained in the post.

As you say, perhaps not quite so simple.

cunningjames

Just to follow up on this thread with my progress, I tried opening an International Investment Account with Morgan Stanley eTrade (as they recommended to my wife), but it's a paper/mail application to the US:

https://us.etrade.com/speedbump/brokerage-mssb-agreement?target=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.etrade.com/etrade/mssb/pdf/international.pdf

I never heard back from them and when I called they couldn't find any record of my application after 6 weeks 🤦🏻‍♂️. The idea being to transfer shares from my wife's eTrade account to an eTrade account in my name, where I can then dispose of them (ownership is 100% clear 👌). I'll probably give this one last attempt, possibly by speaking to them directly and seeing if I can provide the details over the phone or submit via docuSign 🤞.

Alternatively, eTrade does have a 'STOCK PLAN TRANSFER FORM', which can be used to transfer shares to an account with another brokerage firm, including an international broker, i.e. one in the UK. I'm considering using 'Barclays Smart Investor' for this, as they allow to hold stocks in 10 international markets, including the NASDAQ. You provide the Firm DTC number and receiving account details to make this transfer - on paper this looks trivial enough, but I've not tried it yet. The only downside to doing this is that any subsequent disposal within the Smart Investor account is subject to a Barclays FX fee. I'll continue to compare different brokers to see which is best in this regard, but I think Barclays scores well for holding funds/shares, even though I currently use HL (under review):

https://www.barclays.co.uk/smart-investor/investments/investment-costs/

There's an interesting comparison here:

https://apple.news/A05srIa3oSJaVe4FvM3cm7Q

For Barclays, it's a tiered charging scheme for FX, which is not too bad, given the benefit of allowing me to utilise my CGT allowance:

Barclays Smart Investor FX Fees (International Shares)

• First £5,000: 1% fee
• Next £5,000: 0.75% fee
• Next £15,000: 0.5% fee
• Next £225,000: 0.25% fee
• Over £250,000: 0.1% fee

I normally use Wise to transfers USD funds without a FX from eTrade (A $25.00 wire disbursement fee may be assessed when wiring funds to external accounts) and subsequent market rate FX onwards to our UK bank account.

https://alexeskinasy.medium.com/wire-transfer-from-etrade-to-ibkr-wise-or-revolut-c080f5456b8b

However, Barclays charging £87.50 for a £10,000 transaction or £162.50 for a £25,000 transaction seems just about acceptable.